No organization can afford bookkeeping and accounting blunders. Even a single wrong entry can hit a business where it hurts the most. After which, a team of seasoned finance professionals can take weeks, even months, to clean up the financial mess.

Thankfully, QuickBooks Online or QBO has some effective tools to help teams take an organized approach and speed up reconciliation and other processes when sorting out financial messes. These online tools make lives of finance professionals easier and help them keep a level head when dealing with a frustrating situation.

Here are some of the most useful QBO tools as found by a Santa Rosa-based bookkeeping firm.

Bank Rules 

Bank Rules allows you to create rules related to bank feed categorizations. Setting up this feature can take some effort. Many professionals are wary of creating their own rules. Though QuickBooks automatically matches every transaction to the appropriate account, it can make mistakes, which should be double checked for accuracy then added to the register.

To save time and effort in the long run, set up key bank rules correctly. Prior to setting up bank rules, ask your client to identify routine transactions. Set rules for these transactions. If an account has poorly created rules, eliminate them before starting over.

Import Lists and Scanner Apps

QBO offers many tools to help simplify the transition to the tool. The Import List feature allows you to import lists of customers, inventory, or vendors. The Intuit App Center has several apps that sync with QBO.

These tools are designed to help account admins perform time-consuming tasks such as data formatting and paperwork scanning easily and swiftly. Many apps can be used with a regular or smartphone scanner.

Audit Log

QBO tracks and stores changes in Audit Log. You can access the Audit Log anytime to check the history of transactions, including edits, and who made them. The Audit Log marks transactions that were affected by an edit elsewhere in QBO as Indirect Edits. The Audit Log is a useful tool to identify errors and make adjustments.

Ask My Accountant 

The Ask My Accountant feature is designed to help accounting and bookkeeping firms gather data from their clients swiftly and easily. If you have a new QBO setup, you will find your Ask My Accountant account in the Chart of Accounts.

Ask your clients who manage a part of QBO themselves to upload difficult transactions to their Ask My Accountant accounts.

Do you need top-notch QuickBooks bookkeeping services near you? Look no further than Virtual Jeannie Bookkeeping Services Inc. We help both businesses and individuals streamline their finances. Whether you need help with payroll management or cannot make heads or tails of your accounting software, we can help. To talk to one of our bookkeeping experts, call us at (707) 664-1425.